This document relates to information processing.
The Internet enables access to a wide variety of online resources (“resources”). For example, video, audio, webpages directed to particular subject matter, news articles, images, and other resources are accessible over the Internet. Users request presentation of these resources on a user device, for example, by selecting a link to the resource from a user interface of a browser, or entering a uniform resource locator (“URL”) for the resource into the browser. In response to the request, the resource is provided to the user device that causes presentation of the resource by the user device.
An online analytics system can track requests of resources by users by logging URLs for each request of a resource. The requests can be logged, for example, by maintaining an index of each resource and data corresponding to each request for the resource. The data corresponding to each request is provided to the analytics system, for example, in response to execution of a snippet of code that is embedded in resource code. For example, the snippet of code can be a snippet of JavaScript™ that initiates a resource tracking routine and provides the corresponding data to the analytics system.
The data corresponding to the request for the resource can include, for example, a session identifier for the request, a network address of the resource for which the tracking is occurring, a referring page from which the request was received, and a time of the request. The data corresponding to the request can also include data identifying a subsequent request of another resource and a time corresponding to the subsequent request.
The online analytics system analyzes the data corresponding to requests for resources and provides reports of the analyzed data, for example, to publishers of the resources. The reports can include, for example, statistics related to the total number of requests for the resource, histograms of requests for the resource relative to a time of the requests, and statistics related to the time between requests for resources and subsequent requests for other resources. Based on the reports, publishers of the resources can identify most often requested resources and their corresponding characteristics to help inform decisions regarding characteristics of resources that may improve performance (i.e., selections) of the publisher's resources. For example, publishers can upgrade or adjust most often used online resources so that more users benefit from the upgrades. However, the online analytics system is generally limited to analyzing resources based requests for the resource over the network to which the online analytics system is connected.